Continuous improvement of preparedness and response capability is of paramount
importance. It requires up-to-date contingency plans, adapted response stockpiles
and well-trained personnel. Response capacity is not directly dependent
on the size of stocks of dispersants,
booms, pumps, nor the number of people having followed a specialised training
course as part of their job. Rather, it requires properly maintained, suitable
equipment, handled by trained personnel, who can be rapidly mobilised and
are capable of properly supervising response personnel recruited during
the crisis.

Aluminium shuttle used to remove the remaining
cargo of fuel oil from the wrecks of the Prestige

To use these resources in the best possible way, it is necessary to have
a high data collection, transmission and handing capacity, for many different
data elements: observation at sea, oil slick drift prediction modelling,
observation and quantification of arrivals onshore, predictions of requirements
of personnel and equipment, performance of shoreline clean-up, information
of the authorities and the general public.

The combination of stocks and teams from public and private sectors with
modern means of rapid transportation of equipment from one site to another
increase efficiency with limited stockpiles and teams. Oil
spill response has today passed the stage of discovery and approximation.

Rock clean-up training

Oil industry preparedness

The Global Response Network (GRN) formalises collaboration between
oil industry funded, non-profit making oil spill response organisations.
These organisations collaborate and share human and material resources,
in order to maximise the effectiveness of response operations in the event
of a disaster. Today the GRN brings together organisations with regional
and worldwide scope, which are based all over the globe.

Faced with less frequent accidents, this field has become an organised
sector, within the framework of a worldwide strategy, aiming at the highest
cost-effectiveness. On top of operational leaders’ own means, they
should ideally belong to a network of partners able to very rapidly provide
human and/or material support where necessary.

It is important not to let efforts ease off. Each major spill has pulled
up the level of performance to be attained. Today, it is no longer simply
a question of being efficient in the action taken to organise response.
Response should also involve the ability to communicate information in real
time on what is being done and what is going to be done, and to explain,
or even justify, these choices.

The fight against oil spills is no longer only a fight against the pollutant,
but also a fight on the information front.